Sunday the 11th September was a dismal day overall. Phonecalls came from the City – is the swim going ahead? – but the sun was shining in Glengarriff – then at least – and the ferocious south westerly wasn’t even touching the south shore of the island. Yes the swim went ahead!

Garnish Island

We made up the maximum 70 entries by the time registration closed on Sunday. This was really fantastic and beyond our wildest expectations. On the day 59 swimmers took the plunge, with 20 entries for the 5k, 34 for the 3k and 5 for the 1k options.

Swimmers before the start of the swim

It was a bit lumpy on the outside and more so on the 2nd lap, but nothing that would have caused any serious misgivings to swimmers or Safety crews. Pádraig Leahy, kayaker, suggested to 2 newcomers from Skibbereen to turn back at corner 1 because they had already seriously fallen behind and they had no problem with it. In fact the photo shows them in a jubilant mood on their return.
One of the features of the ‘Gadd’ was that a lot of new faces were spotted trying their hand at OWS and longer distances than ever before. Right now I can only single out 2 people: Barry Griffin, who braved failing light, torrential rains and sore arms to finish the 5k and Josh McMahon, our youngest entrant with an excellent 5k, finishing neck and neck with Gabor Molnar, our adopted Hun.
This was meant to be a participatory swim. That meant we didn’t check if people swam the course as suggested to reach the full distance. No matter! 2 of course couldn’t resist the temptation to race it and – drew blood.
Imelda and I would like to thank everybody who took part, supported, collected for Cork ARC and made sure we were safe. At this stage the total for Cork ARC Cancer Support House exceeds € 1,000, with more to come in. A massive THANK YOU to all.

Swim Results by Distance and Swim Time(probably not 100% accurate due to very wet recording conditions)